Bohemian Waxwing

These photos of the "Sidensvans" aka Bohemian Waxwing were shot last week in our garden. The first image was cropped from 10,4MB to 1,2MB, so this image is then roughly 10% of its original size. The three remaining images are cropped in a similar manner. K20D and Tokina AT-X 80-400mm. C&C are welcome!

1.
[IMG]http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/bjolester/SIDENSVANS_1.jpg[/IMG]

2.
[IMG]http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/bjolester/SIDENSVANS_2.jpg[/IMG]

3.
[IMG]http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/bjolester/SIDENSVANS_3.jpg[/IMG]

4:
[IMG]http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/bjolester/SIDENSVANS_4.jpg[/IMG]

Thank you!
Bjørn

These are stunning birds. Looking foward to some migrants arriving here for the winter

What lens were you using for these? There's some purple fringing there (on the high-contrast right hand edges) that could do with some attention.

Blythman: Yes, these are really fascinating birds. They hang around in our garden and take care of all the berries, apples and plums that we have not picked. They do a thorough job

ChrisA: I use the Tokina AT-X 80-400mm. I will have a go at the purple fringing.

Are the images cropped too heavily, would it be possible to improve them much in Lightroom? (I am trying to become more proficient with Lightroom and image processing in general. In due time:roll

I think that the cropping has the effect of reducing the apparent resolution of the images, as posted. On my browser (Chrome) the shadows seem to be blacked. Very pretty birds - thanks for posting them.

I tried to remove the purple fringing i Lightroom, and also did some other adjustments. I realised that the white balance in all these images needed adjusting and I also added some noise reduction. So here is the first image in a new version:

[IMG]http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/bjolester/Sidensvans.jpg[/IMG]

The images are cropped way too heavily to be honest... all the problems with noise, purple fringing etc would be expected in a 1:1 crop - which these basically are! You have made a decent stab in the last shot, but you can't really crop this much and expect decent quality. Need to get closer!

Pentaxophile: Thank you for taking the time to give me valuable advice! You made similar comments to my last attempts of capturing the Grey Heron, but I did not really want to listen But now I now hear you loud and clear: The essence is to get closer!

That's the big one - hard to do, but hard to get a useful image if you don't.